Shapefiles Lower 48

bkherold

Posted 11 April 2012 - 09:34 AM

bkherold

Newbie

Validated Member

2 posts

United States

I am looking for shapefiles for the lower 48 by Census Region and Census Division. I can only seem to locate files that include Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico, which I don't want. Has anyone come accross these?

Posted 11 April 2012 - 10:55 AM

I am looking for shapefiles for the lower 48 by Census Region and Census Division. I can only seem to locate files that include Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico, which I don't want. Has anyone come accross these?

If you have a .shp file that has everything you want PLUS the extra states and territories, then just use the GIS to create a subset feature class without those areas. You can import a national boundary of just the US lower 48 states and do a spatial selection between it and the census data, or you can manually select everything in lower 48 and create a new feature class. Or you select the areas you don't want and delete them from the feature class.

You have to figure out how to get what you need from what's available. It's not really practical with GIS to assume that every permutation of the data that may be needed is out there. If you rely on the data always being exactly what you want or need you'll always be looking for data!